Mozilla's new open-source Gmail alternative puts your privacy first
Mozilla's new open-source Gmail alternative puts your privacy first
www.zdnet.com
Mozilla's new open-source Gmail alternative puts your privacy first
35 comments
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Seems like too little too late. There are other, more established privacy-oriented platforms in more privacy-respecting countries.
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Removes the we don’t sell your personal data part from firefox's privacy policy New product "prioritizes privacy over everything else" lol
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Lol, didn't Mozilla just sell out?
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Yeah no thanks, I just switched from firefox
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Mozilla really should've been doing what proton does
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Gmail alternative
Proton is better. And Betterbird is the best client I used, period.
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Does it? That sounds rather fishy right after Mozilla got a new exec change that focuses on money over everything else
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I'll just wait for the shit to roll downhill on this one. Fool me once ... I have my popcorn ready.
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will never use your email to train AI, flood your inbox with ads, or collect and sell your data
Like Firefox, it's good to know. /s
which injects AI features into the service
A contradiction in the same piece of news.
Last but not least, I do hope they are not located in the USA because they would compete with all the other paid email services around the world.
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That's not a contradiction. I'm not defending the latter bit, to be clear, and I do not use the service. Just pointing out that those things do not contradict each other.
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I’ve been looking to move away from proton mail after the whole thing with the CEO and this looks ideal
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I don't see anything regarding encryption
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Hopefully, I can shed some light because I'm in the process of looking for a new email provider so I've been researching extensively for the past few days.
Firstly, despite their strong marketing about privacy and encryption, ALL the privacy-focused email providers face the same fundamental limitation when it comes to incoming emails from external sources:
- They can read incoming external emails upon arrival.
- They process these emails (for spam filtering, etc.) before encryption.
- Only after this processing do they encrypt the emails for storage.
It's a limitation inherent to the current email infrastructure and affects virtually all email providers as far as I'm aware.
So, marketing claims about "zero-access encryption" often refer to emails at rest (in storage), not during transit or initial processing. For truly private communication, end-to-end encryption (like PGP) needs to be implemented by the sender before the email reaches any server.
That being said, Mailbox provides E2E encryption through standard PGP and S/MIME protocols, allowing users to encrypt both incoming and outgoing emails with their own encryption keys that can be generated or imported into the system. Beyond email encryption, they implement domain security and server-side encryption of all stored data, with the option to create secure aliases that only communicate over encrypted connections.
For Mailbox users communicating with other Mailbox users, there isn't an automatic E2E system in place by default (like Proton has). Doesn't matter to me because very little people I communicate with use Mailbox (it's currently the same situation with Proton for me).
You could register anonymously, use a VPN, and encrypt your messages with PGP and be safe that way. I, however, consider emails inherently unsafe means of communication and use them for registrations and meaningless communication only.
Also, Mailbox has Guard feature that creates a temporary mailbox for recipients without PGP. The recipient receives two emails - one with a link to the temporary mailbox and another with the password. You can also add an additional PIN for extra security that you communicate through another channel.
P. S. Their servers are powered by 100% renewable energy, if that carries any weight.
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It's worth paying for a service rather than trust an org that's been less than direct with us.
(Mailbox has a free tier that's limited).
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Tuta doesn't support external email clients, but if you don't mind using it through the web or their app they have a free tier you can sign up for to see if you like it.
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I just don’t have the energy to play email host hopscotch. Every capitalist CEO is going to stay something I don’t like with eventually.
While completely disagreeing, I can tolerate Proton leadership having a preference towards the political party that imposes less red tape. But after the decade of the month it’s been the dude will probably reverse his opinion now that his money is in danger.
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35 comments